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The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has for a long time been split over strategic questions in Afghanistan. These divisions will be further sharpened following Tuesday evening’s attack by United States warplanes on a Pakistani military post in Mohmand Agency in which 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed.
   Indications that Pakistani soldiers were fighting alongside Taliban forces against Afghan army and US units in the border area will also bolster critics of US policy who argue that the Pakistani military is playing a ‘double game’ and can no longer be trusted. All the same, should NATO ‘lose’ Pakistan, it would be a devastating setback.
   While the precise circumstances of the incident remain unclear, an eye witness, Taliban spokesman Zubair Mujahid, who represents the Taliban’s commanders for Kunar and Nooristan provinces in Afghanistan, told Asia Times Online by telephone: ‘The multiple Taliban groups operating on both sides of the border –– in the Afghan Kunar Valley and in Mohmand Agency –- spotted NATO forces launching into Mohmand Agency’s mountain-top Sarhasoko military post.
   ‘We realised the Pakistani troops were struggling against the NATO forces so we activated our networks all over the area.
   ‘The Pakistani security forces were under siege and were at the point of being evacuated from the post when we opened fire on them [NATO] from several positions. Our attack was so unexpected for NATO that they had to retreat. The Pakistan army lost 11 soldiers, the Taliban lost eight and NATO lost 20 soldiers during the operation.’
   An official Pakistani armed forces release called the air strikes ‘unprovoked and cowardly’ and added that ‘the incident had hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the coalition in [the] war against terror’.
   Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, meanwhile, said, ‘Although it is early, every indication we have is that it was a legitimate strike in self-defence against forces that had attacked coalition forces.’
   
   Damning report
   The timing of the attack coincides with the release of a report this week by the US Defence Department-funded RAND Corp, entitled ‘Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan’, which said that some active and former officials in Pakistan’s intelligence service and the Frontier Corps -– a paramilitary force –- directly aided Taliban militants.
   Significantly -– as happened on Tuesday –- the report suggested direct NATO operations in the Pakistani tribal areas to root out the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
   Confusingly, at the very moment the Taliban went to aid Pakistani security forces -– which will boost respect for them among the lower- and middle-order cadre of the armed forces -– the Taliban kidnapped seven security personnel in Dera Adam Khail in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in Mohmand Agency they exchanged fire with security forces at a checkpoint.
   This contradiction highlights the complex relationships between the Taliban, militants and the Pakistani establishment: nothing can be read as black and white. What can’t be ignored is that ethnic Pashtuns are natural Pakistani allies and the Pashtun heartland is overwhelmingly under the influence of the Taliban, a factor Pakistan has to factor into its regional relationships.
   The case of Taliban commander Haji Nazeer illustrates the point. Al-Qaeda leaders, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and even Uzbek warlord Qari Tahir often praise his services for fighting some of the toughest battles against NATO in Afghanistan. Yet they also curse him for his links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for which he acts as a point man to work against Uzbeks, the network of Baitullah Mehsud and Takfiri Arabs –- those who take it on themselves to decide who is a true Muslim and who is not.
   Haji Nazeer is not the only example of this, several big and small operators receive support or patronage from the Pakistani security forces, which allows think-tanks such as the Rand Corporation to blame Pakistan for actively supporting and facilitating the Taliban fight against NATO.
   From 2006 onwards, US officials and NATO have on several occasions provided evidence directly to Islamabad on Pakistan’s support for the Taliban. Yet the crux is, Pakistan needs to do this.
   The US does the same in Iraq, where it struck deals with former Ba’athist elements to take on al-Qaeda, knowing that Sunni-nationalist Arab tribes would continue to fight against them, though with low intensity.
   
   A lesser evil
   By late 2003, foreign elements, especially Egyptians and Uzbeks, had regrouped in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area and established two organisations. One was for international operations, the Jaishul al-Qiba al-Jihadi al-Siri al-Alami, the other, specifically aimed to operate inside Pakistan, was Jundullah.
   Between them, the two groups masterminded operations such as the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings and the July 7, 2005, London bombings and several attacks on the life of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as well as other officials and security installations.
   Pakistan mounted several military operations against the groups and killed many commanders, including Nek Mohammed, but the insurgency intensified and new faces emerged, such as Baitullah Mehsud, and they established even better facilities for al-Qaeda operations.
   These new commanders did not restrict their activities to South Waziristan, they spread their networks across the country. The previously calm Swat Valley in NWFP and the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad became two important bases for them.
   The new self-proclaimed ‘Pakistani Taliban’ quickly eliminated the local networks of the tribal elders, the only reliable front on which Islamabad could deal with the new militant movements. Over 130 tribal chiefs were killed and dozens fled to different cities. Any cleric who spoke in favour of harmony with Pakistan risked being killed and ending up with a message attached to his body: ‘A lesson for CIA-ISI proxies.’
   By 2005, suicide attacks began in Pakistan and the Pakistani security apparatus was at a loss over how to deal with the militants -– neither the military nor the political approach worked.
   Then an ISI network based in Balochistan province succeeded in making a connection with now slain Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, who, after a lot of negotiation, agreed to play a role in South Waziristan. He acquired a letter from Taliban leader Mullah Omar in which he emphasised that all groups in South and North Waziristan should focus on the jihad in Afghanistan rather than become involved in other regional and global operations.
   Then Pakistan-friendly and legendary mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani was announced as the military leader of the Taliban’s spring offensive of 2006 and he led all factions into Afghanistan. Before this, he had signed a ceasefire agreement with Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. The upshot was that the Taliban had their most successful season since being ousted in 2001 and Pakistan saved itself from a major catastrophe.
   Nevertheless, Uzbeks and a group of Egyptians under the uncompromising Sheikh Essa and his Pakistani adherents Sadiq Noor and Abdul Khaliq Haqqani were still obsessed in fermenting an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. They were not ready to move into Afghanistan to fight against NATO, they wanted to continue the fight against Pakistani security forces.
   So Pakistan had little choice but to follow the American example of the Sunni Awakening Councils in Iraq and what the British did in Helmand province in Afghanistan: divide and rule.
   Ideological affiliations and tribal rivalries co-exist in South Waziristan. While most support the Taliban, Wazir tribesmen were wary of the growing strength of the Mehsud tribe’s new strongman, Baitullah Mehsud. Baitullah had the support of his tribe, but his greatest support was several hundred Uzbek warriors who made Baitullah the biggest commander in the region.
   The ISI exploited this situation and they tapped up Haji Nazeer, in particular playing on the fact that the Uzbeks did not fight in Afghanistan. Haji Nazeer was given US$150,000 to strengthen his network and also received truck loads of ammunition and a guarantee of free movement into and out of Afghanistan.
   In January 2007, Haji Nazeer and his men carried out a massacre of Uzbeks, killing at least 250 of them and expelling the rest from South Waziristan. Haji Nazeer attracted many Arabs, such as Abu Ali Tunisi, who influenced scores of Pakistani jihadis to join Haji Nazeer, whose now-expanded network only fights against NATO.
   A similar case is that of Haji Namdar. He is the biggest recruiter of warriors in Khyber Agency to fuel the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan and he raises funds for the Taliban. The ISI had to solicit his help, though, to break a Taliban network in the agency which was crippling NATO supply lines into Afghanistan (the attacks have since resumed).
   NATO was aware of this contradiction but did not have any choice but to go along with the ISI.
   Asia Times/HK Online, June 13, 2008. Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online’s Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies as an essential matter of ‘national security,’ requiring the threat of — and sometimes the use of — military force. This is now an unquestioned part of American foreign policy.
   On this basis, the first Bush administration fought a war against Iraq in 1990-1991 and the second Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003. With global oil prices soaring and oil reserves expected to dwindle in the years ahead, military force is sure to be seen by whatever new administration enters Washington in January 2009 as the ultimate guarantor of our well-being in the oil heartlands of the planet. But with the costs of militarised oil operations — in both blood and dollars — rising precipitously isn’t it time to challenge such ‘wisdom’? Isn’t it time to ask whether the US military has anything reasonable to do with American energy security, and whether a reliance on military force, when it comes to energy policy, is practical, affordable, or justifiable?
   How energy policy got militarised
   The association between ‘energy security’ (as it’s now termed) and ‘national security’ was established long ago. President Franklin D Roosevelt first forged this association way back in 1945, when he pledged to protect the Saudi Arabian royal family in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil. The relationship was given formal expression in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter told Congress that maintaining the uninterrupted flow of Persian Gulf oil was a ‘vital interest’ of the United States, and attempts by hostile nations to cut that flow would be countered ‘by any means necessary, including military force.’
   To implement this ‘doctrine,’ Carter ordered the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, specifically earmarked for combat operations in the Persian Gulf area. President Ronald Reagan later turned that force into a full-scale regional combat organisation, the US Central Command, or CENTCOM. Every president since Reagan has added to CENTCOM’s responsibilities, endowing it with additional bases, fleets, air squadrons, and other assets. As the country has, more recently, come to rely on oil from the Caspian Sea basin and Africa, US military capabilities are being beefed up in those areas as well.
   As a result, the US military has come to serve as a global oil protection service, guarding pipelines, refineries, and loading facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere. According to one estimate, provided by the conservative National Defence Council Foundation, the ‘protection’ of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the US Treasury $138 billion per year — up from $49 billion just before the invasion of Iraq.
   For Democrats and Republicans alike, spending such sums to protect foreign oil supplies is now accepted as common wisdom, not worthy of serious discussion or debate. A typical example of this attitude can be found in an ‘Independent Task Force Report’ on the ‘National Security Consequences of US Oil Dependency’ released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2006. Chaired by former Secretary of Defence James R Schlesinger and former CIA Director John Deutch, the CFR report concluded that the US military must continue to serve as a global oil protection service for the foreseeable future. ‘At least for the next two decades, the Persian Gulf will be vital to US interests in reliable oil supplies,’ it noted. Accordingly, ‘the United States should expect and support a strong military posture that permits suitably rapid deployment to the region, if necessary.’ Similarly, the report adds, ‘US naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance.’
   
   The Pentagon as insecurity inc.
   These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior figures in both major parties, dominate — or, more accurately, blanket — American strategic thinking. And yet the actual utility of military force as a means for ensuring energy security has yet to be demonstrated.
   Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to 160,000 US troops in Iraq and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq is a country in chaos and the Department of Defence (DoD) has been notoriously unable to prevent the recurring sabotage of oil pipelines and refineries by various insurgent groups and militias, not to mention the systematic looting of government supplies by senior oil officials supposedly loyal to the US-backed central government and often guarded (at great personal risk) by American soldiers. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq is only producing about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day — about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam Hussein back in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times reports, ‘at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery… is [being] diverted to the black market, according to American military officials.’ Is this really conducive to American energy security?
   The same disappointing results have been noted in other countries where US-backed militaries have attempted to protect vulnerable oil facilities. In Nigeria, for example, increased efforts by American-equipped government forces to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have merely inflamed the insurgency, while actually lowering national oil output. Meanwhile, the Nigerian military, like the Iraqi government (and assorted militias), has been accused of pilfering billions of dollars’ worth of crude oil and selling it on the black market.
   In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies is likely to create anything but ‘security.’ It can, in fact, trigger violent ‘blowback’ against the United States. For example, the decision by the senior President Bush to maintain an enormous, permanent US military presence in Saudi Arabia following Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major source of virulent anti-Americanism in the Kingdom, and became a prime recruiting tool for Osama bin-Laden in the months leading up to the 9/11 terror attacks. ‘For over seven years,’ bin-Laden proclaimed in 1998, ‘the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight neighbouring Muslim peoples.’ To repel this assault on the Muslin world, he thundered, it was ‘an individual duty for every Muslim’ to ‘kill the Americans’ and drive their armies ‘out of all the lands of Islam.’
   As if to confirm the veracity of bin-Laden’s analysis of US intentions, then secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld flew to Saudi Arabia on April 30, 2003 to announce that the American bases there would no longer be needed due to the successful invasion of Iraq, then barely one month old. ‘It is now a safer region because of the change of regime in Iraq,’ Rumsfeld declared. ‘’The aircraft and those involved will now be able to leave.’
   Even as he was speaking in Riyadh, however, a dangerous new case of blowback had erupted in Iraq: Upon their entry into Baghdad, US forces seized and guarded the Oil Ministry headquarters while allowing schools, hospitals, and museums to be looted with impunity. Most Iraqis have since come to regard this decision, which insured that the rest of the city would be looted, as the ultimate expression of the Bush administration’s main motive for invading their country. They have viewed repeated White House claims of a commitment to human rights and democracy there as mere fig leaves that barely covered the urge to plunder Iraq’s oil. Nothing American officials have done since has succeeded in erasing this powerful impression, which continues to drive calls for an American withdrawal.
   And these are but a few examples of the losses to American national security produced by a thoroughly militarised approach to energy security. Yet the premises of such a global policy continue to go unquestioned, even as American policymakers persist in relying on military force as their ultimate response to threats to the safe production and transportation of oil. In a kind of energy ‘Catch-22,’ the continual militarising of energy policy only multiplies the threats that call such militarisation into being.
   If anything, this spiral of militarised insecurity is worsening. Take the expanded US military presence in Africa — one of the few areas in the world expected to experience an increase in oil output in the years ahead.
   This year, the Pentagon will activate the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), its first new overseas combat command since Reagan created CENTCOM a quarter century ago. Although Department of Defence officials are loathe to publicly acknowledge any direct relationship between AFRICOM’s formation and a growing US reliance on that continent’s oil, they are less inhibited in private briefings. At a February 19th meeting at the National Defence University, for example, AFRICOM Deputy Commander Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller indicated that ‘oil disruption’ in Nigeria and West Africa would constitute one of the primary challenges facing the new organisation.
   AFRICOM and similar extensions of the Carter Doctrine into new oil-producing regions are only likely to provoke fresh outbreaks of blowback, while bundling tens of billions of extra dollars every year into an already bloated Pentagon budget. Sooner or later, if US policy doesn’t change, this price will be certain to include as well the loss of American lives, as more and more soldiers are exposed to hostile fire or explosives while protecting vulnerable oil installations in areas torn by ethnic, religious, and sectarian strife.
   Why pay such a price? Given the all-but-unavoidable evidence of just how ineffective military force has been when it comes to protecting oil supplies, isn’t it time to rethink Washington’s reigning assumptions regarding the relationship between energy security and national security? After all, other than George W Bush and Dick Cheney, who would claim that, more than five years after the invasion of Iraq, either the United States or its supply of oil is actually safer?
   
   Creating real energy security
   The reality of America’s increasing reliance on foreign oil only strengthens the conviction in Washington that military force and energy security are inseparable twins. With nearly two-thirds of the country’s daily oil intake imported — and that percentage still going up — it’s hard not to notice that significant amounts of our [US] oil now come from conflict-prone areas of the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. So long as this is the case, US policymakers will instinctively look to the military to ensure the safe delivery of crude oil. It evidently matters little that the use of military force, especially in the Middle East, has surely made the energy situation less stable and less dependable, while fuelling anti-Americanism.
   This is, of course, not the definition of ‘energy security,’ but its opposite. A viable long-term approach to actual energy security would not favour one particular source of energy — in this case, oil — above all others, or regularly expose American soldiers to a heightened risk of harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk of bankruptcy. Rather, an American energy policy that made sense would embrace a holistic approach to energy procurement, weighing the relative merits of all potential sources of energy.
   It would naturally favour the development of domestic, renewable sources of energy that do not degrade the environment or imperil other national interests. At the same time, it would favour a thoroughgoing programme of energy conservation of a sort notably absent these last two decades — one that would help cut reliance on foreign energy sources in the near future and slow the atmospheric build-up of climate-altering greenhouse gases.
   Petroleum would continue to play a significant role in any such approach. Oil retains considerable appeal as a source of transportation energy (especially for aircraft) and as a feedstock for many chemical products. But given the right investment and research policies — and the will to apply something other than force to energy supply issues — oil’s historic role as the world’s paramount fuel could relatively quickly draw to a close. It would be especially important that American policymakers not prolong this role artificially by, as has been the case for decades, subsidising major US oil firms or, more recently, spending $138 billion a year on the protection of foreign oil deliveries. These funds would instead be redirected to the promotion of energy efficiency and especially the development of domestic sources of energy.
   Some policymakers who agree on the need to develop alternatives to imported energy insist that such an approach should begin with oil extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other protected wilderness areas. Even while acknowledging that such drilling would not substantially reduce US reliance on foreign oil, they nevertheless insist that it’s essential to make every conceivable effort to substitute domestic oil supplies for imports in the nation’s total energy supply. But this argument ignores the fact that oil’s day is drawing to a close, and that any effort to prolong its duration only complicates the inevitable transition to a post-petroleum economy.
   A far more fruitful approach, better designed to promote American self-sufficiency and technological vigour in the intensely competitive world of the mid-21st century, would emphasise the use of domestic ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills to maximise the potential of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal, and wave power. The same skills should also be applied to developing methods for producing ethanol from non-food plant matter (‘cellulosic ethanol’), for using coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere (via ‘carbon capture and storage,’ or CCS), for miniaturising hydrogen fuel cells, and for massively increasing the energy efficiency of vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes.
   All of these energy systems show great promise, and so should be accorded the increased support and investment they will need to move from the marginal role they now play to a dominant role in American energy generation. At this point, it is not possible to determine precisely which of them (or which combination among them) will be best positioned to transition from small to large-scale commercial development. As a result, all of them should be initially given enough support to test their capacity to make this move.
   In applying this general rule, however, priority clearly should be given to new forms of transportation fuel. It is here that oil has long been king, and here that oil’s decline will be most harshly felt. It is thanks to this that calls for military intervention to secure additional supplies of crude are only likely to grow. So emphasis should be given to the rapid development of bio-fuels, coal-to-liquid fuels (with the carbon extracted via CCS), hydrogen, or battery power, and other innovative means of fuelling vehicles. At the same time, it’s obvious that putting some of US military budget into funding a massive increase in public transit would be the height of national sanity.
   An approach of this sort would enhance American national security on multiple levels. It would increase the reliable supply of fuels, promote economic growth at home (rather than sending a veritable flood of dollars into the coffers of unreliable petro-regimes abroad), and diminish the risk of recurring US involvement in foreign oil wars. No other approach — certainly not the present traditional, unquestioned, unchallenged reliance on military force — can make this claim. It’s well past time to stop garrisoning the global gas station.
   TomDispatch, June 12, 2008. Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of several books on energy politics, including Resource Wars (2001), Blood and Oil (2004), and, most recently,
   Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.

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